The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin (18 page)

A month later the Fletcher brothers talked. Cole had them brought before Richard Browne on a gray, damp morning in late November. Jacob was thin, colorless, and sickly, but his eyes retained the alertness of a harried animal. The younger Fletcher had lost some of his fleshy bulk, and much sleep, but his level of awareness seemed about the same—a heavy-lidded sensibility awake only to the possibilities of corporeal gratification or pain. The brothers had been dressed in rough homespun clothing, reminding Browne of boyish and neglected street ruffians from London who had been scrubbed and dressed against their surly wills.

Browne explained immediately that if they were prepared to cooperate, Goody Hussey, having heard of their torments, had agreed to help relieve them. But they must swear by their sinful souls to behave themselves and aid Mr. Browne in his search for Mr. Coffin. Both brothers seemed to understand yet neither had any knowledge of Coffin's removal. In fact, Jacob protested, they had not seen Coffin since just before his wife's death. And only then, Jacob explained, to be sent on some errand they could not accomplish, for the people they were to see were not where they were supposed to be.

Jacob spoke earnestly enough, but Browne did not believe him. He threatened to return the prisoners to their shackles,
and thence to their whippings and exiles, the sentence resulting from their jury trial.

Jacob begged that they be saved first by Goody Hussey's ministrations, whatever else might be done to them. Even Henry became extremely agitated by Browne's displeasure.

Jacob continued to insist so earnestly that they knew nothing of Coffin's departure that Browne slowly began to believe him. They were so certain of their innocence on this particular point. It may be, Browne thought while Jacob pleaded, the one honest moment of his life.

So Browne tried another approach. What was this errand they were unable to accomplish?

The brothers looked at one another as if their boat were about to plunge over the brink of a deadly waterfall.

“He wanted us to waylay Mistress Coffin and Higgins as they came along the bay in Higgins' canoe.”

“His own wife? Come, man, to what purpose?”

“Teach her a lesson, Sir.”

“What lesson?”

“That she had not got away with it. He would not be a cuckold, Sir, by the blood of Christ. He knew and could punish. And Higgins, he would never lie with woman again. No one could cross Mr. Coffin in a confidence and get away.”

“You were hired to kill Higgins?”

“No, Sir. Just cut off his cods. He showed us how he wanted it done, so as not to infect with death and to stop bleeding. Just how to sear the open flesh with a hot blade.”

“And Mistress Coffin?”

“Oh, only to scare her proper, Sir. Rob and abandon her on Bailey's Island, where he could search and deliver her himself. Teach her the wages of sin. He were too proud a man, Sir, to be wearing her horns!”

“He paid you for this?”

“Yes, Sir. And would bring no charges against us if all went well.”

“And you carried out his orders?”

“No, Sir! We was paid, but we couldn't find them. So never done the deed. They never came where they must go, where we laid for them. No Sir. So we told him we never see them, and he were right angry with us. But when his wife was disappeared, he came miserable at heart. So we heard, for we didn't go back. Seems he blamed himself, then Higgins, then any he could think of.”

“He believed you?”

“Yes, Sir. And why shouldn't he? It were truth. Why would we come back later to him if not? He knew.”

“You will swear upon your souls, before God and man, to the veracity of this tale?”

The brothers glanced at one another again. “Yes,” Jacob said. “And may we be rewarded!”

“Tell me, Fletcher, why should a man like Coffin hire two such gross lumps of flesh for such a business?”

“He knew us, Sir. We did other work for him, beforetimes. He swore us to secrecy. On our lives. We wouldn't cross him, no Sir. Not a man like Mr. Coffin.”

“You kept your oath?”

“Oh yes, Sir. You see my brother, he can't speak, so it's all on me. Just as he knew, Sir. And by the wounds of God I weren't about to go against
his
will.”

Browne had pen and paper brought in, drafted their depositions, which they marked, had their marks witnessed, and then left to find Cole to review the document. Cole, however, was suspicious of the testimony. Still, he allowed Browne a free hand in discovering whatever he might. He believed Browne the only one with the knowledge, now, and the tenacity to discover some degree of truth in the whole matter. He had trusted
him as long as he had known him, and Browne's father before him.

Browne did not know whether he believed the brothers. Up to a point he did. He found his perspective on Coffin changing. Browne saw that even if he should find Coffin, the man would not necessarily resolve his questions. Yet could there be any loss in confronting Coffin with the depositions and the hidden life revealed in his wife's journal? And having it out? He was learned and proud, but wouldn't even his vain mask slip before these bitter facts? And how better to test the brothers' version of events? If they had been hired for such violence, then the field would seem to be narrowed to Higgins and the brothers. Moreover, if Coffin had believed Higgins guilty, then the brothers' deposition could well be fundamentally true.

There was little more Browne could do for now, so he returned to his own affairs until he had word of Black Ned, and until spring would make travel to Salisbury convenient again. The Fletchers received their twenty stripes “well laid on” and were interned once again pending further interrogation. For the moment they were relieved of Goody Hussey's grip.

It was early December, just before the river froze, when Browne's man returned from the Banke with word of Black Ned. Once again Browne hurried downriver to the port town.

But all Ned could tell him was that five or six months ago he had shipped crates downriver for Coffin and booked his passage on a ship destined for several stops down to New Haven and back. That, Ned emphasized, was his only business with Mr. Coffin. He asked no questions of those who hired him.

So Browne spent the winter of 1650–51 attending to his personal responsibilities. The only definite plan he made regarding the Coffin affair was to engage Darby Shaw again for a journey, come spring, back into the Indian country to contact Jared Higgins once more. He expected, also, that he would first visit
Dr. Sedley's residence in Salisbury. But that spring, just as he was making more definite plans for his journey to Salisbury, a letter from Sedley arrived, dated April 14, 1651.

S
IR
—

I received the message you left with my housekeeper during your October visit. Please forgive this delay in my response. I had been on an expedition into the interior, fully expecting to return by early December, but
dis aliter visum!
On our return journey we encountered the most debilitating temperatures and snowfall. We lost several men, and straggled home during that brief February thaw. I have been so engaged with my responsibilities to the families of the deceased and so weighed with my own recuperation that it is only at this very moment I find myself able to respond to your inquiries.

Indeed, my friend and colleague Mr. Coffin came to Salisbury last summer in a highly agitated state of mind. He at first took his lodging at a common inn, his diet being provided in large part at the ordinary. I was to tell no one of his removal to Salisbury, and had not. But as you shall see from the enclosed, there is no longer need for silence. Mr. Coffin is dead.

There was a long wasting, but finally, it seems, he took his own life. Some violent poison of his own concoction, apparently. In my opinion he must have been close to death in any event, due to the dissolution of his body and the distraction of his once fine intelligence. His intelligence was matched by uncommon persistence. I expect we will find yet the greatest discoveries by him, equal, say, to the Peruvian Bark of the Jesuits.
Quis melior quam literatus?
Though his manner was grave and aloof, it was the gravity of the learned:
E cuius ore nil temere excidit.
He was a man now, however, in strange torment. I am given to understand that he could neither eat, sleep, study, nor converse with others toward the very end.

I myself witnessed only the beginnings of these
disintegrations before departing for the interior. I was of course deeply concerned for him. He had been, formerly, a man of prodigious capacity for mental labor, a capacity matched by his aspiration to find the key to unlock, in a manner of speaking, the barriers between the vegetal and rational divisions of the soul. I considered him, moreover, one of the most knowledgeable men as to physic and the plant life of the Americas, especially regarding the surgical rarities of the New World. I was in much pain to see my friend so stricken, as if he had suddenly grown very aged before his time. Yet I was facing an expedition that had been years in the planning and that had cost me and my benefactors dearly. There was simply no delaying our departure once the time grew propitious. Mr. Coffin understood this, of course.

His own ambition to discover the quintessential or sovereign anodyne caused his deep interest in my own investigations. We were long engaged in complementary researches into the nature and properties of New World vegetables. My own investigations here among the savages are producing discoveries of potent physic. I count it, and Mr. Coffin confirmed my belief, a serious detriment to
both
Englands that there is no comprehensive catalogue by physical description and by properties of the plant life, and especially the medicinal plant life, of New England, notwithstanding Parkinson's
Theatricum Botanicum.
That is my central project. Need anyone be reminded, moreover, of the gross, even tragic, error some have fallen into by application of the English names of European plants to plants found in the Americas?

Indeed, Mr. Browne, by the time my epistle is before you, I will be in transit to London where it has been arranged for me to present certain of my more curious discoveries. I therefore enclose a fair copy of the note Mr. Coffin left upon his death. As to the sum of currency connected in that note to your name, you may apply to the County Court of Probate the Clerk. At the request of
his new wife and widow, I have made arrangements for the disbursement of that sum to you. All other affairs Mr. Coffin alludes to I have, with his wife who is administratrix of his estate, seen to through the local magistrates.

Forgive me, I need explain that he was married again very shortly after his arrival here to a woman widowed of some nearly ten years. He was sufficiently capable of orderly carriage at that time, and though she knew of his troubles, seemed much taken with him, and desirous of restoring the health of so extraordinary a man. But the issue of her efforts, as you now see, was failure. I think no one, not even she, saw the degree of his distraction nor the depth of his illness. “His heart died within him, and he became as a stone.” This good woman, by the by, had the administration of her former husband's estate, as well as the bulk of Mr. Coffin's. Hence there has been no contesting of what he particularly left to you. The poor woman left us immediately, I am told, removing far off to Hartford, or the vicinity thereof.

Again, please accept my apologies for my absence when you called and for the further delay in responding to you.

Thus taking leave, I commend you to God.

J
EREMIAH
S
EDLEY

Attached to Sedley's letter were several documents, including Coffin's last note, dated simply December 1650.

I, Balthazar Coffin, who can no longer support the burdens and afflictions of my life, do hereby enclose a copy of my will and testament for the benefit of my wife Mary, the London Philosophical Society, and Mr. Richard Browne, that he may have resources to complete his inquiries and for recompense of his labors thus far.

Would that I might have left a just portion of my estate to my former wife, Kathrin, but she departed this
life before me, in no small part owing to the very infections of my own mind that still weigh upon me.

Once I had thought to regain my marriage after long absence from this land. But ultimately I discovered, on the contrary, that my previous lofty ambitions and prepossessions had irreparably lacerated those tender threads that make of man and wife one true flesh.

Why it is that only after great shock, or illness, or violence we begin to see our lives and persons for what they are, only the gods can say. How far I have transgressed from humility, justice, and love—nay, from every manly virtue—I dare not speak.
A recta conscientia transversum unguem non oportet quenquam in omni sua vita discedere.
I know now that there is no arrogance or meanness I have not practiced, no
vinum daemonum
I have not sipped.